CCP Senior Director: Dust 514 "Failed To Contain Scope," Promises Better For Project Nova

Over on PCGamesN, there's an interview with CCP Shanghai Senior Director Snorri Árnason, who goes into sometimes-painful detail about what went wrong with Dust 514 and how things will be different with Project Nova.

In large part, the interview comes off as sounding like Dust was planned as too ambitious, with too many moving parts than could be effectively managed and implemented. The much-ballyhooed interaction between Dust 514 and Eve Online -- especially the ability to call in orbital strikes -- never really developed like it should, and was more of a "selling point" than anything else.

"It sounds great to get an orbital bombardment between the two games - it’s a great selling point. Logistically it’s terrible. I played the game for three years, I never saw it really happening."

Despite the decline of the PlayStation 3 and rise of the PlayStation 4, Árnason doesn't think Dust on PC would have fared much better.

"It failed to contain scope, and delivered too many average features instead of few top quality ones... [Putting it on PC] it wouldn’t have fixed the inherent problems of scope versus execution."

Project Nova looks to be a more self-contained game, feeling like Eve without being shackled to CCP's iconic MMORPG or requiring a connection to it to get the full experience. The whole Dust 514 concept and execution never felt right to me or practically anyone I knew, so it's good to see CCP learning from the experience and making something with a much higher chance of success.